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Removing DDO

The Background:
The 120GB HDD was installed as the 2nd HDD in my old PC running Win98SE. Ontrack DDO was installed so that the full capacity of the drive could be used.

I replaced that PC 18 months ago. This runs Win XP Home SP2 and has 2x200Gb SATA HDD configured as RAID 0. Since that is now nearly full I want to add the 120GB HDD to my new PC. I don't care about the data on it, anything I wanted was copied over ages ago.

The ASUS A8V motherboard allows one to mix SATA and PATA drives.

I installed the drive, re-booted and the new drive was recognised as Drive F:, unformatted. I formatted it but the only capacity option was 32GB. It worked as a 32GB drive - I copied a small folder of music to it and played that music. The BIOS only sees it as 32GB capacity.

Quite obviously, the initial part of DDO that tells the BIOS that the 120GB HDD is only 32GB is still in place and I've got to get rid of it before I can get the full capacity back. Both the floppies containing the original Ontrack s/w are reported as corrupt now

I downloaded Hitachi's DFT (Drive Fitness Test (v4.07)). I'm as sure as I can be that it recognised my HDD as 120GB that first time. I ran the Quick test and it passed, then zeroed the MBR in an effort to remove the DDO. That didn't work and left me unable to see my 120GB HDD in Windows Explorer even though Device Manager tells me that it is working properly. I uninstalled the driver and rebooted. Windows XP saw that new hardware was installed but no joy. Both the BIOS and DFT see the 120GB HDD as 32GB now.

From All Programs|Accessories|System Tools|System Information|Components|Storage|Drives the 120GB HDD is not listed.

From All Programs|Accessories|System Tools|System Information|Components|Storage|Disks the 120GB HDD is shown as 31.49 GB (33,814,126,080 bytes) and 512 Bytes/Sector.

1. Some hard drives have a jumper setting for certain size limitations. I doubt this is what your issue is, but you might check the jumpering.

2. Have you tried deleting the partition and then re-setting the partition and formatting through XP's disk management? I cannot tell from your post how you formatted. It is at Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management.

3. You may want to zero-fill the entire drive. You may have already done that, though your post only spoke of the MBR.

1. Some hard drives have a jumper setting for certain size limitations. I doubt this is what your issue is, but you might check the jumpering.

2. Have you tried deleting the partition and then re-setting the partition and formatting through XP's disk management? I cannot tell from your post how you formatted. It is at Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management.

3. You may want to zero-fill the entire drive. You may have already done that, though your post only spoke of the MBR.

Firstly, many thanks for such a prompt reply.

1. There are two jumpers and pretty pictures showing all the options (which include size limitations). The jumpers are set to Master, not size limits.
2. I unplugged the RAID discs, then booted up with a Win 98SE boot floppy and ran FDISK. After a reboot, it was listed as Drive F:. When I clicked on that drive letter Win XP told me that it wasn't formatted and offered to format it for me. I accepted the quick format and it works as a 32GB drive.
3. I started the zero fill process, using DFT, but stopped it when I realised that it was only looking at the 1st 32GB of the drive.

My understanding of DDO is that hides the 1st track from the BIOS and puts a fake MBR into the 2nd track. If that's correct, I think I need a program that ignores anything that the BIOS says and gets the information it needs directly from the drive so that it can zero fill the 1st and 2nd tracks. That should then let the current BIOS do its own thing properly.

If I were dealing with a similar situation, I'd run Dban (Darik's Boot & Nuke) to wipe the drive, then partition and format it after.
If you use Dban, make sure no other drives are even connected. It will allegedly wipe everything it can see. I haven't dared test that claim with anything but one drive.

If I were dealing with a similar situation, I'd run Dban (Darik's Boot & Nuke) to wipe the drive, then partition and format it after.
If you use Dban, make sure no other drives are even connected. It will allegedly wipe everything it can see. I haven't dared test that claim with anything but one drive.

Thankyou everyone for your help. I have solved my problem by a combination of being forced to think clearly enough to describe the problem properly plus the clues I got from you guys.

I found the Seagate software via Google and downloaded it last night. I tried to run it but nothing happened. A combination of personal ignorance and the nagging thought that maybe it only worked on Seagate drives stopped me persuing that further.

It was a big help that the two existing drives are configered as RAID 0. The SATA cables are ridiculously easy to unplug. Once I realised that that was why my PC was telling me to insert a bootable floppy, I KNEW that I couldn't screw anything up if I unplugged them deliberately.